Yves Smith has the video of Dylan Ratigan’s Mad as Hell Moment. He unloads on Versailles, everyone in government, the financial industry, and campaign finance.

This CBC reports about an incident in Arizona, is wince-inducing if you’re a guy. All I can say is that he has probably removed himself from the gene pool, which is a good thing. 👿

In order to prove that Congress is willing to ‘tighten its belt’ to reduce the deficit, CBS announced that the House Page program ends after nearly 200 years.

Laying off these teenagers will save over $5 million, and they can’t vote, so what good are they? No word on how much Congress spends on two-year leases of cars, or their travel budget.

Attaturk bemoans the fact that he didn’t think of this ‘tweet’ from Jimmy Streich [@streicher187]:

Breaking News – S&P downgrades the tea party to KK+ #p2 #tcot

Yves Smith asks the important question: Did Standard and Poor’s Break SEC Regulations in Disclosing Its Downgrade to Select Parties? [The answer would appear to be: YES.]

Defying all logic, and the obvious fact that people moved to T-bills from stock, the media and Very Serious People continue to insist that the market drop was caused by the S&P downgrade. This has led Dr. Krugman to offer his Downgrade Doom Loop.

If I were a big player in the market who knew the downgrade was coming, I would have sold out before the official announcement and watched the little players panic. Then reentered the market after it bottomed to pick up stock at rock bottom prices. Say sell on the Friday before the announcement, and then buy back on Tuesday after the dust settled. Oh, did I mention that the Dow is up today? A coincidence, I’m sure.

Of course, that would be with clients’ money, as my personal money would already be in cash and T-bills as I waited for deflation to take hold.

Congratulations to the membership of the 112^th Congress. For the first time since polling has taken place on the issue, a CNN Poll: Time to clean house in Congress?, shows that your own constituents want you gone. Normally Congresscritters get some support from their voters [i.e. Congress is terrible, but my Congresscritter does a good job], but this poll shows that people want all of you gone. The Republicans ‘lead’ in the poll, which is to say people want the Republicans gone first.